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JAPAN
Apr 5, 2005

Machimura, Ban to meet on sidelines of Pakistan talks

Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura and his South Korean counterpart, Ban Ki Moon, will meet in Islamabad on Thursday, Japanese government sources said Monday.
BUSINESS
Apr 5, 2005

Wheat, barley, sugar, starch selected as must-protect farm items for WTO

Japan has designated rice, wheat and four other agricultural products as politically sensitive items that must be protected by high tariffs in unofficial bilateral talks under the World Trade Organization, government sources said Monday.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Apr 5, 2005

Burned out, wills and tax advice

Fire! Last week our house had a fire We had just moved into a rental house and paid all the key money, real estate fees etc. and nine days later our neighbor's house had a major fire, which spread to ours. The neighbor's house is completely burned, and one person died. My family all escaped unhurt,...
BUSINESS
Apr 5, 2005

Kohler backs Koizumi's reform efforts

Visiting German President Horst Kohler said Monday that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's structural reform efforts would boost Japan's competitiveness in the global arena.
JAPAN
Apr 5, 2005

LDP's new Constitution will widen SDF's role

The Liberal Democratic Party on Monday unveiled a rough outline of its planned constitutional amendment, which says the Self-Defense Forces should be defined as a military tasked with defending Japan and joining international peacekeeping efforts.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 3, 2005

Religious liaisons: A voice from the void

LETTERS OF THE NUN ESHINNI: Images of Pure Land Buddhism in Medieval Japan, by James C. Dobbins. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004, 261 pp., with b/w illustrations, $60 (cloth). In 1921 a cache of papers was found in the archives of the Nishi Honganji temple in Kyoto. They were written by a...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 3, 2005

The rebirth of a salesman

For Atsushi Yamada, conductor of the New York City Opera, his presentation of Giacomo Puccini's opera "Madame Butterfly" to be staged in Tokyo and Nagoya in May will be something of a triumphant return.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 3, 2005

So much food that we don't know what to do with it

The media didn't quite know what to make of that bizarre story last month about the elderly Sapporo man who allegedly killed his wife following a dinnertime spat. One might expect a husband to become angry over not getting enough food, TV commentators implied, but in this case the situation was the opposite....
JAPAN
Apr 2, 2005

Nuclear foes want Rokkasho, Monju on U.N. nonproliferation agenda

KYOTO -- Japanese and international antinuclear groups plan to use an upcoming United Nations conference on nuclear nonproliferation to push for a moratorium on the Rokkasho atomic fuel reprocessing plant and the Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 2, 2005

Life coaching helps you move on with momentum

"People have personal trainers to keep them fit and healthy," says Wendy Kerr. "It seems perfectly logical to have personal coaches to keep life moving in the right direction."
Rugby
Mar 31, 2005

Asian rugby hoping to build on success of Hong Kong Sevens

While Waisale Serevi and his Fijian team were busy stealing the headlines with their superb performance in winning the Rugby World Cup Sevens 2005 in Hong Kong last week, Asian rugby was showing, both on and off the field, that it could play a huge role in the future development of the game.
MORE SPORTS
Mar 31, 2005

Miyazato values overseas experience

Ai Miyazato hopes one day to be as famous on the world stage as she is in Japan.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Mar 29, 2005

Seeking advice on accidents and health

Accidents Not so long ago, Jay had an accident. While riding her bicycle, she hit a woman who had to go to the hospital, where she was given a full check-up by the doctor and emerged with a clean bill of health.
Japan Times
Features
Mar 27, 2005

Meister of all he sautes

French, Italian and Spanish are the most familiar European cuisines in Japan. As for Austrian -- well, most people probably don't even realize that the country famed for "The Sound of Music" is also noted for its venerable and enormously varied fare.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 27, 2005

Rice shows her mettle in Asian gauntlet

HONOLULU -- A Korean journalist in Seoul last weekend asked visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice how she coped with a bureaucracy staffed largely with white men.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 27, 2005

First, stop, look and listen

THE SINGLE TONE: A Personal Journey into Shakuhachi Music, by Christopher Yohmei Blasdel, Tokyo: Printed Matter Press, 2005, 168 pp., with photographs and glossary, 1,500 yen (paper). In the summer of 1972 Christopher Blasdel first came to Japan. He was from West Texas, "a landscape dominated by strip...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / JAZZNICITY
Mar 27, 2005

Swing is the thing for bassist Nakamura

Not many Japanese jazz musicians have played in front of a President of the United States, but Kengo Nakamura is one. After leaving his hometown of Osaka to study at Boston's esteemed Berklee College of Music in 1988, where he switched from electric to acoustic bass, and struggling for a while to find...
BASEBALL / MLB
Mar 26, 2005

Hillman's Fighters poised to win it all

In just two seasons American manager Trey Hillman has taken the perennial second-division finishing Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters to the Pacific League playoffs.
BASEBALL / MLB
Mar 26, 2005

Iwakuma determined to help Eagles soar in Sendai

Hisashi Iwakuma started playing baseball as an elementary school first grader at the age of 6, by throwing a ball against a wall in a game of catch with himself and dreaming of becoming a professional. Now, at age 24, he is arguably the best pitcher in Japanese pro baseball.
BUSINESS
Mar 26, 2005

Fujita left his heirs 49.1 billion yen

The late Den Fujita, founder and former president of McDonald's Co. (Japan), left his relatives 49.1 billion yen in inheritance subject to taxation, the tax office in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward said Friday.
BUSINESS
Mar 23, 2005

Spat over disputed isles slowing FTA talks: Machimura

Negotiations on a free-trade agreement between Japan and South Korea, already behind schedule, have been further stalled by the territorial dispute over a set of islets in the Sea of Japan, Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said Tuesday.
COMMUNITY / LIFELINES
Mar 22, 2005

Positive credit card results

There was great interest in last week's Zeit Gist column on credit cards in Japan by Vanessa Mitchell. We'd like to pass on some experiences of card usage in Japan sent in by readers as well as give some information on no-charge cards that there wasn't enough room for last week.
MORE SPORTS
Mar 21, 2005

Japanese cheerleader achieves NFL dream

In the summer of 1994, Tomoko Kojima was watching an NFL preseason game in San Diego as a part of her home-stay program. But it wasn't the Chargers or the visiting San Francisco 49ers that caught her attention. Instead, she couldn't keep her eyes off the cheerleaders.
Features / WEEK 3
Mar 20, 2005

On a wing and no fare

When Momoko Sasaki goes traveling, she literally "goes an extra mile" to enjoy perks that few of her peers have likely ever dreamed of.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 19, 2005

Curing the plague of piracy

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- For years now piracy in the Malacca Strait has been one of the top problems facing the Asian region. A recent Japan Times editorial very succinctly dealt with the potential dangers that it presents, especially with regard to Japan. My purpose here is to consider possible ways...
COMMENTARY
Mar 17, 2005

Bet your bottom dollar on financial jolt

LOS ANGELES -- Fasten your seat belts -- and get ready for a major test of the core stability of the global financial system. How do we know that a jolt is coming? Just consider that:

Longform

Construction equipment sits idle in a park near Shiba Toshogu shrine in Tokyo's Minato Ward. While Japan has a history of treating its trees with reverence, green coverage is said to be lacking in most of the major cities.
Do Japan's trees no longer occupy the sacred space they used to?